Northwestern Overpowers Duke in NCAA Quarterfinals

Saturday, May 22

Evanston, Ill.

2:00 p.m.

Duke University

Northwestern (Quarterfinals)

Kaestner: Duke Readies for Recess with Movie Premiere

Northwestern Overpowers Duke in NCAA Quarterfinals

5/22/2010 3:00:00 PM | Women's Lacrosse

By: Duke Sports Information

EVANSTON, Ill. - No. 2 Northwestern scored 10 unanswered goals to open the game and never looked back, defeating the seventh-seeded Duke women's lacrosse team 18-8 Saturday afternoon at Lakeside Field in the quarterfinal round of the 2010 NCAA Championships.

Northwestern, in search of its sixth consecutive national championship, improves to 19-1 overall while Duke ends its season with a 14-6 record after making its thirteenth consecutive appearance in the NCAA Tournament.

"To go down 10 to nothing, that was a tough pill to swallow at halftime," head coach Kerstin Kimel said. "I felt that we strayed away from our game plan. We had a good couple of possessions to start the first half, and we didn't do the things we had to do. [Northwestern] did a good job of taking away what we wanted and making adjustments."

Northwestern's Danielle Spencer led all scorers with four goals, two assists and four draw controls as the Wildcats had five players register three or more goals in the contest. Lindsay Gilbride, Kat Thomas and Christie Kaestner paced the Devil attack with two goals each, while Amanda Jones and Kim Wenger also netted goals for Duke.

The first half belonged to Northwestern as the Wildcats outshot Duke 23-7 and dominated the draw 14-2. Northwestern put 10 goals on the board before the Blue Devils responded with a Thomas score with 6:34 remaining in the first half. Thomas would add another goal later in the frame, but the Wildcats took a comfortable 13-2 advantage into the intermission.

"As a team, we made a goal to crash the ball," said Thomas, "and I think that the first draw we started off crashing the ball, but after that we started to steer away from it. That attributed to them getting the ball and one of the reasons we were able to come out in the second half and have such a good run was we got back to our game plan and we got back to everyone going to ball, everyone on the field involved in the draw. We need the draw to get the ball down and that's what we did."

"Our game plan was to come down and work them," Gilbride added. "We didn't take some of the best shots and that wasn't what we were looking for and got us strayed away from our game plan."

Duke was able to regroup after halftime and outscored the Wildcats 6-5 in the second frame, but could never overcome Northwestern's lead. The Blue Devils won the draw to start the second half and Gilbride netted the Devils' third goal of the game, sparking a Duke 4-1 run. Wenger converted a free position opportunity to pull Duke to within 10, and Gilbride's second goal of the game cut the lead to nine with just over 25 minutes to play. Kaestner continued the rally with a goal, assisted by Danielle Kachulis, less than a minute later.

However, the Blue Devils were unable to continue to hold the Northwestern offense at bay as the Wildcats pushes their lead to 11 with three unanswered over the next four minutes. Jones netted an unassisted goal with 15:47 left to play, but Duke was unable to come any closer as the two teams traded one goal apiece to end the match.

"It's tough to look at the stats and see that we didn't do a good job in some of the areas we focused on," said Kimel. "[Northwestern] does certain things very well, the draw being one of them. If you have the ball, they can't score. We struggled with that clearly in the first half. I'm proud of our kids in the second half. We won the draw in the second half, 8-4, and we outscored them in the second half, which was great, but it took us a whole half and halftime to get going. Again, that is attributed to [Northwestern] really coming out and taking it right to us in the first half."

The Blue Devils are now 14-13 all-time in NCAA Tournament play and fall to 2-7 against Northwestern in program history. The two teams met earlier this season with the Wildcats earning a hard-fought, 19-14 victory over Duke in Durham. The Wildcats advance to play No. 3 seed North Carolina in the NCAA semifinals on May 28 in Towson, Md.

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